The assembly and manufacture of information handling systems and components is extremely competitive, even slight advantages return significant gains when multiplied over the vast quantities of units sold. One important factor in the purchase of an information handling system by a consumer is the reliability of the system. To insure this reliability, manufacturers and assemblers test components and systems for operability within desired parameters. For example, unit testing of individual information handling system components, such as peripheral component interconnect (PCI) components and the like, typically involves installing a driver for the component and rebooting. This may be prone to inconsistent results caused by a poor or incorrect installation, remnants of other drivers and installations, and the like. These inconsistent results may cause an inoperable information handling system and/or components being shipped, thereby greatly increasing the cost to the manufacturer in the return and repair of the system as well as resulting in great inconvenience to the consumer.
One way to promote efficient and effective testing of the components is to create a data image for each test. The data images may be stored for access by devices needing the data image, such as on a master system that is accessible by each testing device in a device testing system. However, due to the size of the data images, for example, a data image size may be 100-500 MBs and greater, it may take a considerable amount of time to transmit the data images over a network.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an image system and method that may reduce the time and network traffic required in transferring a data image during testing or debugging operations.